


The Could In People

by junkshopdisco



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Destiny, M/M, Modern AU, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 10:24:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10592067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkshopdisco/pseuds/junkshopdisco
Summary: As Christmas approaches, Merlin wonders how on earth he's going to introduce his boyfriend Arthur - son of the infamous Tory cabinet bigwig Lord Pendragon - to his lefty, CND protester, egg-throwing, mum.





	

Arthur lassoes Merlin with tinsel the instant he’s through the door. Merlin staggers as he’s tugged into a kiss – the enthusiastic and noisy kind – and as he pulls away, bewildered, Arthur tosses the end of the string over his shoulder like a feather boa. Merlin looks down at the shiny silver garland he’s now wearing on top of his scarf and grimaces.

‘Are you drunk or something? Was Leon in here again leading you astray?’

‘Where’s your festive spirit, Merlin? It’s December the first and according to a long-held tradition in my family, I decorated.’

Merlin eyes his room. _Decorated_ is one word for it. _Desecrated_ would be the other one. Over the bed – still in the unmade state it was when he left that morning for his lecture – dangle the string of malfunctioning fairy lights he bought in last year’s sale. Arthur has hung the vintage baubles he stayed up all night to buy on eBay from his bookshelves with what look distinctly like shoe laces. On his desk sits a little plastic Christmas tree, branches splayed out menacingly, and next to it are two fake robins, apparently mating. It’s a motley selection in a shambolic arrangement.

‘You normally have a professional do it, right?’ he says.

‘Come on, Merlin – it’s not bad for a first effort and you have to admit, I didn’t have much to work with.’ 

Merlin sighs, takes off his tinsel boa and his coat. He hangs the latter up behind the door and drapes the former over the back of his chair. He pokes at the baubles and thinks at least _they_ look nice, and Arthur – oblivious as ever to Merlin being in any way offended about another careless word about his financial status – comes up behind him, wraps a warm, heavy arm around his waist and kisses his shoulder. In spite of himself, Merlin smiles.

They met in Fresher’s Week. Arthur Pendragon – who swaggered about the place telling anyone who’d listen he was studying political science on the say-so of his cabinet bigwig daddy – was drunk in the kitchen. Merlin walked in and found him talking to the ketchup, made some jibe about where his sycophant friends were when he needed them. No retort had been forthcoming, and Merlin had taken pity on him and put him to bed, muttering about public school Tory boys not being able to hold their drink. In a fit of leftyism and spite while he was out cold, he’d written the word _tosspot_ on Arthur’s forehead in Sharpie. He’s not quite sure how they ended up here in a tangle of tinsel boas and randy fake robins. There’d been an argument – _you could at least let me earn the word tosspot rather than just assuming_ – guilt – _all right, all right. You want to come for an apology drink? Seriously, with your fringe like that you can barely see it_ – then the union and disco lights and Lady Gaga cooing _just dance_. At some point the press of Arthur’s excessively lovely body and a large quantity of cheap cider had gone to Merlin’s head. It was supposed to be a one night thing. In fact, it was supposed to be a twenty-minutes-in-the-toilets-with-his-jeans-around-his-knees _thing_ , but here they are on the verge of Christmas with sentimentality sticking them together. He sighs. The robins eye him like they know he’s a liar and it’s not Christmas sentimentality at all. When he wasn’t looking, somehow, things between them got sort of deep.

‘We’ll be done with lectures soon,’ Arthur murmurs. ‘What are you doing with the holiday?’ 

‘Home. Mum. You?’

‘My father wants me to go skiing with him.’

Merlin’s lips tighten against saying something desperately sarcastic and working class. 

‘When d’you leave?’

‘I said he _wants_ me to go skiing. I was thinking I might – do something else.’ Merlin turns in his arms and looks at him, lifting one eyebrow. ‘He’s taking his girlfriend, and nothing puts you off the _après ski_ like picturing your father with someone your own age.’ 

‘I can imagine,’ Merlin says, even though he can’t, because he has neither a father nor any idea what _après ski_ is. Arthur’s eyebrows are high and eager, and when Merlin doesn’t go on he sighs and tightens his grip on Merlin’s waist.

‘This is the part where you invite me to come home with you, idiot.’

‘Why’d I do that?’

‘Because _a_ , I decorated your room for you, and _b_ if you don’t,’ Arthur says, grinning, ‘I’ll be here on my own, and your guilt will take the taste right out of your mince pies.’

‘You’d hate it. You’d hate where I live and my friends and – ’

‘I won’t.’ 

‘Arthur – ’ 

‘Don’t make me third wheel it here with the robins.’

Arthur’s hands scuff, fingers just slipping underneath both the jumpers Merlin’s wearing. He meets Merlin’s eye through his lashes, trying to be winning and flirty and wry. It’s as fake as the robins. Just below the surface he can see Arthur – the real one – the one who lives in all the things about his dead mother and his famous father and his home life he never says. Merlin rolls his eyes.

‘All right. But the train fare’s going to wipe me out – I can’t afford to get you anything much. Don’t be – extravagant.’

‘Merlin, I want to – I don’t mind if you can’t – ’ 

‘I do. That’s the deal. You can come home with me but only if you agree to that.’

‘Fine,’ Arthur says, and then his eyes widen in the way Merlin has come to fear. ‘But it’s not Christmas without special gifts so – let’s make each other something.’

He grips Merlin’s arms, egging him on with his eyes. It’s exactly the same look he used to get Merlin to spend the night in the library with him, living out some long-held bookshelf sex fantasy, the same one that lead to pulling a reckless revenge prank on a lecturer with roving hands, and why Merlin lets him stay over most nights because _come on, sleepovers are fun, Merlin_. In short, it’s irresistible.

‘ _One_ homemade gift, then, but it’ll end in tears when you see I can’t make anything more complex than potato art.’

‘I would cry tears _of joy_ for your potato art.’

Merlin laughs some sort of disagreement, and Arthur tugs him closer, fingers toying with the button on his jeans. His eyes are ridiculously pleased, and he leans in, close enough to kiss but going for Merlin’s ear instead.

‘Now look up,’ he says.

Merlin does, and above their heads, stuck to the ceiling with BluTac, is a bunch of mistletoe. Real mistletoe. The kind he probably had to break into the staff offices to steal. Merlin wraps his arms around his neck and sighs at him. When he wants to be, Arthur Pendragon is ridiculously adorable. That’s how he turned what should have been twenty minutes of Fresher’s Week fucking into four months of unexpected relationship – by peppering being insufferable with moments like this.

Merlin leans in and kisses him, tasting the corner of his mouth. The familiar stir of desire pricks where they’re touching, and Merlin takes a step and then another and lowers them both onto the rumpled duvet. 

‘You could at least have made the bed,’ he murmurs, and Arthur kisses his neck and starts pulling up his jumpers.

‘What’d be the point? I knew as soon as you got back we’d mess it up again. You can’t resist me, Merlin, you know you can’t. And who can blame you, frankly. I’m _very_ handsome.’

Merlin sighs and drags Arthur’s mouth to his to stop him talking. Arthur rolls him onto his back, makes short work of turning him from a man to an incoherent jumble of thoughts and pretty undignified little noises. As Arthur takes him in his mouth Merlin thinks that – different as they are – at least this part is easy. Apparently a public school education is rubbish for teaching people to hold their drink, but does turn out alumni who give exceptionally good head.

______

Merlin’s on his way back from the bathroom when a distinctive waft of grapefruit tea smacks him in the face. He sticks his head around the kitchen door and smiles.

‘Hey Gwen,’ he says, and she smiles back at him over her mug.

‘Nice hair.’

Merlin glances at himself in the glass. He smoothes his obvious sex do and bites his lip as she quirks a knowing eyebrow at him. 

‘So – you’re handy, right?’ he says. ‘You make stuff and – stuff.’ Gwen surveys him over the top of her tea with cautious question. ‘I mean you make clothes and – things.’

‘I’m a fashion student, Merlin. Goes with the territory.’

Merlin glances down the corridor, and closes the door to the kitchen. 

‘I need to make a gift for someone – ’

‘And by _someone_ you mean _Pendragon_.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Walls are thin, Merlin. Why do you think I’m standing on my own in the kitchen?’ Merlin mutters an apology and she rolls her eyes. ‘What do you want to make him? Belt holster for his two Blackberrys? Satchel for his ego..?’

Merlin bites back a _he’s not that bad_ because it’s mostly just the orgasm talking and to all intents and purposes, he is.

‘I was thinking maybe something knitted?’

‘You can knit?’

‘Um, no – but my nan used to and she was senile so how hard can it be? Keep it simple and go with a scarf? Maybe red. He looks really good in red.’

‘Might work.’

‘So you’ll help me?’

‘I’ve got exams, Merlin.’

‘I’ll love you forever.’

‘What use is that to me?’

‘I’ll get you the hot guy from my poetry seminar’s number, then. I happen to know he’s just your type – single, shy, sensitive, and really easy to get drunk.’ Gwen’s lips purse in thought, switch from side to side. ‘Please?’

‘Oh all right. I’ll pinch some wool from the supply cupboard. Come and find me when Arthur’s gone home and – ’

‘He’s staying the night.’ Gwen rolls her eyes again. ‘He decorated my room. I can’t kick him out.’

‘Come over after you’ve put him in a sex coma, then.’

Merlin grins. 

‘Love you forever, Gwen.’

‘Shut up, Merlin,’ she says, but grins back at him, anyway.

______

‘That looks nothing like a pearl.’

‘It’s purl, with a _u_.’

‘What’s that mean, then?’

‘I don’t know. I find my etymological knowledge of knitting terms sadly lacking.’

‘This is why you won’t get a first.’

Gwen throws a ball of red wool into Merlin’s face, and Merlin lifts his arms in half-hearted defence. Knitting – it turns out – is easier watched than done, and he winds the wool around his needle only for it to slip resulting in the loss of most of his row.

‘Fuck, I’m useless. At this rate it’s going to be one of those stupidly thin hipster scarves. _Oh, behold my scarf that’s entirely pointless. I’m too cool to keep warm_.’ 

He gestures irritation and loses the rest of his row. Gwen presses her lips together so she doesn’t laugh, and Merlin frowns at the mess of red wool in his hands and tries again.

‘So are you going to tell me why you’re making Arthur a present?’

‘He sort of invited himself home with me for Christmas. My mum’s going to do her nut.’

‘Why? Does she not know you’re gay?’

‘Oh, no – we had that conversation after she caught me _in flagrante_ with a signed photo of Phillip Schofield.’

‘Phillip – ’

‘I got glandular fever, overdosed on _This Morning_ , and it turned into a formative experience. Don’t laugh.’ Merlin loops the wool around the needle and draws it back, leaving a little soft knot of red. ‘She’s just a bit – right on, my mum. Last year she got arrested for hitting a policeman with a _give peace a chance_ placard at an anti-war demo.’

‘Not _this_ war – not the one – ’

‘The one Arthur’s dad took us into?’ Merlin says. ‘That’ll be the one. It’s going to go great. _Hey mum, this is Arthur. He’s everything you hate in the world personified. Hey Arthur, this is my mum. When I was a kid we used to drive all over the country in a clapped-out camper van, just so we could throw eggs at people like your dad._ ’ Gwen makes a wavering noise of sympathy in her throat. Merlin holds up his knitting and squints at it. ‘Why does this suddenly look like a noose?’

‘Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.’

‘Maybe it’ll be worse than I think.’

‘Then why are you doing it?’

‘He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, Gwen. And – ’ Merlin frowns, because he hasn’t said the words before and they turn into a confession on his tongue. ‘I like him.’

‘I thought it was just a sex thing?’

‘Was. At first. Now sometimes I lie awake and watch him sleep and pretend we’re old. It’s – pretty pathetic, actually.’

Gwen sighs out amusement, gathers the knitting from his hands. 

‘Give it here,’ she says. ‘I’ll do you a couple of rows.’

‘Aww, th – ’

‘I know, I know,’ she says. ‘You’ll love me forever. He better put out, this friend of yours.’

______

‘Wow, so people _actually_ live here?’

‘Yes, Arthur. People do. And close your mouth. It’s – not helping you blend in.’

Merlin tugs his coat closer to him and they walk past a boarded-up shop front that has the words _Die, bitch, we want to party_ spray painted across a poster of Maggie Thatcher. The street is pitted with pot holes and the air rings to the perpetual wail of a siren, and somewhere in the distance sounds the bleating of a car alarm. Merlin’s only been away a few months, but it was long enough for him to forget quite how broken everything is here. He glances at Arthur. He thinks the King’s Road is slumming it, and Merlin shoves his hands into his pockets and wonders what the fuck he’s doing.

‘I still don’t see why we couldn’t drive,’ Arthur says.

‘Stuff gets nicked here.’ 

‘My car has the best anti-theft devices in the world.’

‘I’m sure that’d really help, until someone sets it on fire in frustration.’

Arthur clears his throat and scans the road, presumably looking for a change of topic. A dog throws itself at a front door as he passes – woofing out a vicious warning – and Arthur flinches and then pretends he didn’t.

‘So,’ he says, ‘did you always live here?’

‘Here and a bunch of places like it,’ Merlin says. ‘Moved around a lot. My mum couldn’t always afford the rent so we’d get evicted and move wherever. Lived in a camper van for a bit.’

‘That must have been – interesting.’

‘If by _interesting_ you mean draughty and weird and ostracizing, then yeah, it was. Anyway, this is it. Home sweet – whatever.’

Merlin pulls his keys out of his pocket. Arthur makes a face of vague horror at the sight of the grubby net curtains and the broken pane in the door, and quickly tries to hide it. Merlin turns his key in the lock and helps the door along with a swift and would-be subtle kick.

‘Hey mum it’s just me. Us. Me and – Arthur.’

He ushers Arthur in and they squash into the hall. On the wall a CND poster scowls out, and another has a submarine on it with strikes through it and the words _Stay strident: no Trident_. Merlin shucks off his coat and dumps his and Arthur’s bag in the corner. 

‘Last tenant was a nutter, eh?’ Arthur says, gesturing to the posters.

‘Those would be my mother’s idea of a warm welcome, actually.’

‘What?’

‘She’s – a bit of a rebel. She likes to protest. Poverty, inequality, armament – those would be her big ones but she’ll always hop aboard a new cause if it – ’

‘Merlin,’ Arthur hisses, fingers closing on his elbow. ‘Does she know who I am?’

‘Not in so many – hi mum.’

His mother runs down the stairs, pulls him into a hug. Merlin laughs against her neck, and it comes out slightly hysterical because she’s wearing a _make love not war_ t shirt and some pretty indefensible tie-dye. 

‘Were you always this tall?’ she says, letting him go.

‘No. They stretched me as punishment for not doing my coursework. It’s a scandal, mum. Someone should do something. You should make a placard.’ 

‘Don’t be cheeky. And this is your Arthur?’

She smiles at him, and Arthur offers his hand and a stiff, ‘Arthur, Arthur Pendragon.’

‘No relation to that awful Lord Pendragon, I – ’

‘Only the – genetic kind.’ Arthur swallows and sticks his hand out further with a forced smile. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ 

‘Oh. Merlin didn’t – ’

‘No,’ Arthur says, with a pointed glare, ‘he didn’t. And who can blame him? That would have ruined this delightful moment of awkwardness and surprise.’

______

‘Arthur Gwaine, Gwaine Arthur. If anyone wants me I’ll be over here, killing myself.’

Merlin sinks onto a chair and slumps forward until his head hits the table with a pleasing _thunk_. The pub around him hums to the noise of Christmas Eve chatter and some atrocious boy band rendition of _Little Drummer Boy_. At least it drowns out the echo of the political argument they left behind – _what I wish your father and his kind would understand is – it’s not a failure to understand, sometimes there are tough choices – tough choices? Don’t make me laugh. To a Tory a tough choice is what colour leather they want in their Range Rover_. Merlin winces. He’s not actually sure which one of them is more pissed off with him. His mother thinks he’s a class traitor who’s literally sleeping with the enemy, and Arthur’s silence has been brittle and hurt, the result of Merlin letting him walk, unarmed, into the kind of debate he normally only gets into in essays.

‘Anyone for a drink?’ Gwaine says.

‘Certainly,’ Arthur says.

‘A beer would be grand then, thanks,’ Gwaine says, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Bar’s that way.’

Arthur tuts, but heads over anyway, and Gwaine’s scruffy jeans sit, his hand warm and familiar as it pats Merlin between the shoulder blades.

‘So why’re you hanging with this posh boy?’ he says. ‘Are you scamming him? Do you need a hand? I reckon I could have his watch in under ten if you want to get his wallet.’

Merlin squints out from beneath his hair. 

‘I’m not – scamming him,’ he says. ‘We’re – you know. He’s my sort-of boyfriend. And don’t try and rob him. His dad could bring back hanging specially for you – he’s in the cabinet.’

‘What’s your mum say to that?’

‘Twenty minutes on Trident, forty on Marxism, nearly an hour on the inequitable division of wealth. Is he making a run for it yet?’

‘If he is he’s doing it in the wrong direction. I know blondes are supposed to be stupid, but – ’

Merlin kicks his foot and sits up. Arthur smiles and pushes a bottle of beer across the table towards him and another for Gwaine. 

‘Sorry about my mum,’ Merlin says. ‘She works at the community centre and she just gets – invested. She feels for people and – ’

‘I liked her, Merlin,’ Arthur says. 

‘She called your dad a war monger between mince pies, and when you said he was away for Christmas she said _where, the Hague?_ ’

‘I don’t have to agree with her to admire her – spirit.’ Arthur sips his beer and his lips curl into a smile. ‘Besides, I’ve called him worse while we were playing squash.’

‘See?’ Gwaine says. ‘No need to off yourself. Your posh totty is fine with your mum being feisty.’

‘Hey – I’m not _posh_. Not by a long chalk.’

‘You want to try and sound any more middle class, there?’ Gwaine says. ‘I think if you really go for it there’s another inch or so in it, _totty_.’ 

They descend into an argument about whether Arthur is or is not _totty_ , and Merlin tips forward and rests his head back on the table. _Dear Santa_ , he thinks, _for Christmas I would like to be anyone but me_.

______

‘Bloody hell, Merlin, it’s freezing. Can’t you turn the heating up?’

‘There isn’t any heating _to_ turn up. I told you to bring something warm.’

‘You neglected to mention I needed Arctic-standard pyjamas.’

Merlin huffs and pulls the duvet and the worn blankets up around them, nestling them together as close as he can, even though he has little warmth of his own to give away. Arthur punches the pillow, frowning when he can’t get it arranged to his liking.

‘So your mate Gwaine – ’

‘Did he steal your watch? I’ll tell him to give it back.’

‘What? No he – why would he steal my watch?’

‘Because it’s worth more than he earns in a month and he has a terrible drinking problem. He used to just steal beer because that fulfilled the function of a job _and_ a hobby, but he’s banned from every Tesco in a forty mile radius. Cramped his style.’ Arthur settles on the pillow and squints at him in the dark like he has no idea whatsoever if Merlin’s joking. Merlin rolls his eyes. ‘What about him?’

‘Nothing, just – he’s not what I imagined your friends would be like. I thought they’d be more like you.’

‘Gwaine _is_ like me.’

‘You study poetry and listen to whimsical music and buy vintage baubles on eBay, Merlin. He’s a beer-stealing petty crook who gets himself banned from supermarkets and tells stories that start, _this one time this fella hit me in the nads with a tea kettle_.’ 

Merlin huddles down, sighing at the wallpaper above his head. When he was fifteen he named the damp patch Jabba The Hut and used to tell it all his secrets, especially the ones about Phillip Schofield. Before he met Gwaine – at a cafe where he was trying to flirt his way out a bill he couldn’t pay – Jabba was the only thing he could be honest with. He wonders if he should mention that as a change of subject, or if it’s a double whammy of making him seem crazy and drawing Arthur’s attention to how dingy the room is.

‘You going to warm me up, then?’ Arthur says. 

His hips press suggestively at Merlin’s, and Merlin murmurs a half-hearted protest about thin walls. Arthur kisses his neck, nibbles the spot that turns Merlin into a compliant simpering kitten. He mutters, ‘No fair,’ but finds himself under the duvet anyway, tugging at Arthur’s non-Arctic standard pyjamas.

______

‘So this is Christmas,’ Arthur says.

‘And what have we done?’ Merlin’s mum says, sadly. 

Arthur smiles, rather forced, and eyes the kitchen like it’s an exhibit in a museum, a frozen tableau called _Poor People: Christmas Day_. Merlin hands him his stocking from where it was stuck to the fridge, and goes back to his tea and his toast, takes a bite and a sip before delving into his. He pulls out a satsuma, grins, and sets it on the table.

‘What d’Santa put in yours, then, Arthur?’

‘Snap,’ he says, and drops a satsuma next to Merlin’s, like they’re kissing.

They both extract identical bags of chocolate coins, mini Christmas puddings, and a handful of chestnuts, and Merlin pulls his tea towards him and wraps his hands around the mug to warm them. 

‘Thanks, mum.’

‘Nothing to do with me, Merlin,’ she says. ‘Did you not hear the hooves on the roof last night? Obviously you’ve both been very good boys. Or at least the sort of naughty Santa approves of.’ 

Merlin chuckles, adjusts his mini pudding so it’s straight on the table. Arthur eats his in one bite, says, ‘Don’t you want that?’ 

‘I save it,’ Merlin says. 

‘Why?’

‘If you eat it straight away it doesn’t taste as nice.’

Arthur makes a face like he’s thinking _well that’s excessively strange_ , but at least keeps the actual words to himself in favour of, ‘Should I get your gift?’ 

‘Oh, we don’t do that until Boxing Day.’

‘What? If you don’t do gifts what do you do?’

‘Something very worthy at the community centre,’ Merlin says, sipping his tea. ‘You’re going to hate it, but I did warn you.’

______

Arthur does hate it – _so this is what you do for Christmas? You make over-cooked turkey for homeless people? It’s not very festive is it?_ Merlin fixes a smile and grinds out – _have you never heard of community spirit? How about Christmas charity, Arthur? Help the poor and needy?_ Arthur mutters, _from what I can work out, Merlin, you_ are _the poor and needy_ and gracelessly dishes out the sprouts like each one has done something to personally offend him.

‘We need more gravy,’ Merlin says, and leaves him on the serving line.

He’s resting his head against the notice board in the kitchen when Gwaine comes in, juggling roast potatoes. He catches one in his mouth and offers Merlin the other with a smile that says he’s probably been at the sherry. Merlin shakes his head. 

‘What’s wrong? Did some old codger feel you up again because he assumed you were the pudding on the menu?’

‘Just needed a minute. Worlds collided, head spinning – ’

‘Arthur?’ Gwaine says. Merlin nods and fingers the edge of a notice about the oven only having one temperature and to adjust cooking times to compensate for gas mark _inferno_. ‘You like him, don’t you? You like him like you liked Phillip Schofield. And – unlike that bastard Phillip, your totty seems to like you too, so – ’

He leaves his words to hang, and Merlin fiddles with a drawing pin and wonders how to make the thoughts stirring up his guts make sense.

‘I think he’s going to break my heart, Gwaine.’ 

‘Doesn’t seem like he’s about to give you the heave-ho to me.’

‘That’s not the only way to do it.’ Merlin sighs, and Gwaine waits for him to marshal his thoughts. ‘Sometimes I look at him and I can see all this – _possibility_. He’s going to be running the country one day, more than likely, and sometimes I think yeah, he’ll be amazing at it because he’s not as straight-laced or stuck up as he seems, and he has this sort of innate desire to do the right thing – my mum’s been giving him an earful and he’s just _listening_. And he _can_ be really kind, and he has this great disregard for the rules and propriety, even though he’s had that shoved down his throat his whole life. When he’s being like that, I can see us still together when we’re fifty. But sometimes he says this stuff that’s spectacularly careless – like, he just called me poor and needy – and he takes things for granted and makes me want to shout _don’t you know how fucking easy you’ve had it?_ in his face. And I know he hasn’t really had it _that_ easy because his mum died and his dad’s a grade A git, and in his own way he’s completely shattered – but when we met I wrote _tosspot_ on his forehead in Sharpie and sometimes I think I still mean it. What if I want who he _could_ be and not who he is? That’s a really drawn out heartbreak, clinging to a hope that’s constantly fading, glimmering, fading again.’

Gwaine looks at him for ages, then takes Merlin’s face in his hands and kisses him noisily on the cheek.

‘Did I ever tell you you worry too much, Merlin?’

‘I do not,’ he says, and tries to squirm away, suspecting that the thing nudging his ear is a roast potato. ‘It’s you – you worry too little.’

‘Why are you thinking so much about the future?’

‘I don’t know, it’s just – _there_.’

Merlin wipes his cheek and his ear theatrically with his sleeve, and Gwaine sighs, amused and maybe a bit drunk. 

‘Well if it’s _there_ – I guess – does it matter if he’s a tosspot?’ Gwaine says. ‘I mean you can still like him, can’t you?’

‘I can’t spend my whole life with a tosspot.’ 

‘Then maybe he needs someone to make him not a tosspot, someone to see the _could_ in him. Maybe you can do for him what you did for me.’

‘What’d I do for you?’

‘Now, you know I’m not one for declarations – ’

‘Until you’ve had a whiskey.’ 

‘I’m imparting my wisdom here. Don’t make fun of me,’ Gwaine says, and Merlin laughs. ‘Seriously – ’ Gwaine tugs on his jumper, his eyes suddenly sober and earnest. ‘You remember when we met? I had nothing – and now I’m here and – I’ve people to care about me. You saw me when no-one else was looking, and you made me think – well if _he_ sees it, if he sees something worthwhile – maybe it’s there after all. And with Arthur, maybe you’ve a right to get wound up about some of the stupid stuff he says – but maybe you can still trust who you think he might be, one day, too. Besides, what else you going do, wait for Phillip Schofield to get divorced?’

Merlin rolls his eyes. Gwaine has a way of making everything – from an earth-shattering crush on a cheesy TV presenter to a soul-deep dilemma about someone he lies awake imagining being old with – seem really, really small.

‘Now,’ Gwaine says, tossing the remaining potato into the air and catching it in his mouth. ‘I’m going to go and flirt with your mother. You get back to your totty before someone propositions him over the cranberry sauce and gives you something real to worry about.’

______

That night Merlin can’t sleep. He lies staring at the damp patch and doing lines from _Return of the Jedi_ in his head to try and keep his thoughts about Arthur at bay. He’d like to trust Gwaine’s assessment – that he’s worrying about nothing – but he can’t quite make his eyelids believe it. He huffs and gets up. The stairs creak beneath his bare feet and he winces as his mother whispers, ‘That you, Merlin?’

He pushes the door to her room open, and she flicks on the lamp sitting on the storage box she uses as a bedside table. 

‘Sorry,’ he says quietly. ‘Didn’t mean to wake you – I was just going to get some milk.’

She pats the bed in invitation, and Merlin goes over and sinks onto it at her feet. He fingers the blankets. They’re ancient, knitted squares in a cacophony of colour, stitched together and repaired over and over. He thinks of his own hopeless effort, and wonders if knitting ability is one of those genetic quirks that jumps about the family tree. Not that he knows enough about most of the branches of his to tell.

‘Can’t sleep?’ his mother says. She reaches for him, smoothes his hair, and in the gesture is every night he dreaded a new school or the wrench of leaving somewhere because debts were catching up to them. ‘What’s the matter, Merlin?’

He toys with a melodramatic _everything_ , because somehow that’s how it feels. For all his pomposity and his bluster and his damn thoughtlessness, Arthur has turned into something all-encompassing. Merlin pulls a loose thread on the blanket, and his mother’s hand rests on his shoulder and squeezes some kind of encouragement.

‘What do you think of Arthur?’ he says. ‘As a person.’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think, Merlin.’

‘Does.’

‘All right. I think he’s very sure of himself,’ she says, ‘and maybe a bit blinded by some of his father’s views – ’

‘It’s hard for him. He wants to please his dad – and he has all this expectation piled on him – he didn’t even get to choose what course he wanted to do at uni. It’s like his life isn’t his. Sometimes I think he doesn’t know how he’ll measure up without being the same, even though deep down he’s not.’

His mother’s smile is slow and knowing, and Merlin rolls his eyes with the feeling he’s just been tricked. He can’t remember when it started, when he began to bristle when people said things about Arthur he used to think himself. 

‘That was pretty crafty, mum.’

She laughs and touches his chin. ‘If you’d let me finish, I was going to say the only thing that matters to me is whether or not he makes you smile,’ she says.

Merlin thinks of all the things they’ve done together – hiding in the stacks and shushing each other with kisses and sniggers, Arthur at the window of the lecture theatre, beckoning him out because he’d heard of unfairness befalling someone, every little _come on, Merlin, it’ll be fun_. En masse it’s like they never do anything but smile and laugh and tug each other into doing things they never would dare alone.

‘He does. But – we’re just _so_ different, mum.’

‘Not really. You had odds of different sorts stacked against you, maybe – but you’re both turning out all right in spite of them. And – I don’t think there’s much he wouldn’t do for you.’

‘Why’d you say that?’

‘Well the cheque – ’ Merlin looks up sharply. ‘He didn’t say? At the community centre – he asked how much it was to buy his way off sprout duty.’

‘Typical.’

Merlin pokes at a hole in the blanket, squashing his finger into it and making it worse until his mother takes his hand and squeezes it in hers. 

‘Not so very typical, actually,’ she says. ‘I was telling him about when we moved here, how we couldn’t afford Christmas and we went there, and you loved it and wanted to keep going back. And I told him about the oven being on its last legs, how there’s never enough money from the government and I was dreading telling you about the new cuts because you’d be upset at the thought of it closing. He tried to be subtle but he couldn’t write fast enough. He was very generous – it was like being on _The Secret Millionaire_ – although he was adamant it was a bribe, not a donation.’

‘ _Charity is for women who are too old to lunch, Merlin_ ,’ Merlin says, adding a bad impression of Arthur’s indignant head waggle. 

‘However he dressed it up, it was a nice thing to do.’

‘I know,’ Merlin says, and looks at the section of blanket he’s all but unravelled. ‘You wouldn’t mind, then – if me and Arthur work out – you wouldn’t mind that he’s – you know – _Arthur Pendragon_?’

‘I’d be pleased you listened when I told you not to judge people by what they seem, and find out who they are. You just follow your heart.’

‘You followed yours and that didn’t exactly – ’ His mother looks up, and Merlin winces. ‘ – I didn’t mean – just – I want to be sure my heart’s not leading me into a dead end.’

‘If you’re waiting for a sign from the universe, you’re going to be waiting forever, Merlin.’

‘Yeah.’ He sniffs in fake amusement and then shakes his head at the numbers on the clock. ‘Anyway – I should let you get some sleep. You must have served a hundred pints of custard today.’

______

Merlin’s feet make the bottom stair groan, his mother’s words going round and round in his head. He pauses in the kitchen doorway, but instead of going to the fridge for the milk, he goes into the lounge and wrestles his and Arthur’s gifts out from underneath the aging plastic tree.

Arthur’s soft snores fill his bedroom, and Merlin perches on the edge of the bed, sets his parcels down. The one with his name on is square and badly wrapped, bound with tape like a hostage. He imagines Arthur stalking it, pouncing with the paper like he’s trying to catch a feral cat in a net, probably saying something like _come here you little bugger_ as he grapples it into submission. Merlin smiles, and shakes his shoulder. 

‘Arthur? Wake up, Arthur.’

Arthur groans and swats at his hand. Merlin persists until he opens one eye in an irritated squint.

‘Someone dying?’ he says.

‘No but – it’s after midnight. We can open our presents.’

‘Are you five?’

‘Just – please?’

Arthur sighs but sits up anyway. Sleep has turned his hair into a cockatoo spike, and he scratches at his shoulder. Merlin bites his lip and pushes his gift towards him. 

‘Merry Christmas, then,’ he says. 

Arthur smiles, and turns the gift over, sliding his finger underneath the tape to release it. The paper falls open, and in it Merlin’s scarf sits in a pathetic nest. 

‘Oh,’ Arthur says.

He lifts the scarf out and just _stares_ at it. The longer he holds it the more straggly and useless and inadequate it seems. Deep silence follows and Merlin’s heart squeezes itself into a knot. He hadn’t meant it as a test, but still nausea swells in his stomach like they’ve failed. This is what he’d been afraid of, that being with Arthur would always mean hoping for him to react one way and getting something else, something less, having the could-be Arthur constantly dangling just out of reach. There’s always a glimmer – giving money to a cause he doesn’t really believe in on the sly because of some moment of conscience and benevolence Merlin somehow pricked out of him – and then this. The horrible crash. 

Merlin gets up, goes over to the window. Snow drifts down onto the yard below, but he can’t seem to care.

‘What are you doing?’ Arthur says. ‘It’s not as if there’s a view to admire.’

Merlin closes his eyes. A bit of him wants to believe it doesn’t matter, to just let this play out like it’s any other relationship with any other man. A bit of him wants to crawl into bed, cover Arthur’s body with his and just shag until he forgets everything but the heat of Arthur’s mouth and the tiny dimpled smile he does just after he’s come. In fact, quite a lot of him wants to do that, but he finds himself speaking anyway, because this is all so very deep and Arthur’s not _any other man_ at all. Never was.

‘This is never going to work.’

Arthur’s _what?_ sounds genuinely surprised. Merlin stares at the glass, at his reflection, as Arthur looks at him, baffled, then rustles the duvet as he gets up.

‘Merlin?’

His voice is whisper-thin, and Merlin watches as the fogged out blue-ish reflection of Arthur steps closer and strokes the back of his neck. He shivers as the touch trickles down his spine, clings to the painted wood beneath the window in some effort to stay in control. 

‘What was I thinking, bringing you here?’ Merlin says. ‘What were _you_ thinking, sleeping with someone who wrote _tosspot_ on your forehead in Sharpie?’

‘Honestly?’ Arthur says. ‘I was thinking _thank fuck. Thank fuck there’s someone here who’s not going to toady around me._ And then I was thinking _wow he has a lovely mouth_ and two weeks later I was writing poetry inside my head about your fingernails. What’s this about?’

‘I told you you’d hate it here. I was right, wasn’t I? You’ve had a lousy Christmas.’

It’s close enough to the truth, he thinks, and it makes more sense than _if you can’t even pretend to be pleased about what I made you then what’s the fucking point? I can’t live in the gap between who you are and who you could be, I just can’t._

‘I haven’t,’ Arthur says. ‘Do you want to know what my family do at Christmas, Merlin? They exchange exorbitantly-priced gifts over a dinner someone else cooked and try and outdo each other with their lavishness. I wanted something real, for once. And if _real_ comes with being berated about Trident and called totty and groped by old women who smell like cats, and if it’s a bit cold and there’s mould on the walls, then – ’

‘S’damp,’ Merlin says. ‘Not mould. I call it Jabba. It’s like having a pet, then.’

Arthur cautiously steps closer, fingers Merlin’s hip. 

‘You think I hate it. The scarf. You think I wish you’d got me something expensive and fancy.’

Merlin rolls his eyes. Arthur’s mouth presses against his shoulder, and Merlin watches the kiss like the sensations belong to someone else. He murmurs Arthur’s name – intending a warning, but somehow on his lips it doesn’t sound like that at all. Arthur shifts away anyway, reaches back onto the bed for his gift. 

‘Open it.’

He nudges Merlin’s arm with it until he reluctantly takes it. He sighs, tugging at the tape and not succeeding in getting it to do more than stretch. At his elbow he can feel Arthur tense, and eventually he caves and snaps the tape for him. 

‘You have the upper body strength of an asthmatic gnat, Merlin,’ he says.

Merlin ignores him, and rests the mangle of tape and paper and gift on the ledge. He lifts out a box that once had shoes – no doubt expensive and made from top-notch cows – in, and opens the lid. Nestled in tissue paper is something long and stringy and woollen and _red_. He stares at it.

‘We made the same thing?’ 

‘We made the same thing.’

Arthur’s glass counterpart catches his gaze, smiles like it’s bursting out of him. Merlin swallows, and lifts the scarf from its box. It dangles, wonkily, from his hand. There’s a hole right in the middle and none of the rows line up, but still his heart gives a little hiccup. He glances at the ceiling – or maybe at the universe – and thinks, _really?_

‘You look good in red,’ Arthur whispers.

‘That’s what I said to Gwen about you.’

‘Yours is better,’ Arthur says.

‘Gwen helped _a lot_.’

‘She told _me_ that was cheating, that she’d teach me but I had to do it all myself or it didn’t count.’

‘I bribed her.’

‘So did I,’ Arthur says, indignantly. ‘Somehow in my endeavour to make you cry tears of homemade gift joy, I spent more than I ever would have in a shop. What did you give her? I thought things were tight?’

‘Hot guy from my poetry seminar’s number. They had a very lovely first date – you know, the kind that lasts all week and has you doodling their name and yours in stupid hearts on your notes.’ 

‘Ah, that explains it. Love trumps money every time.’

Merlin laughs, and Arthur kisses his shoulder again, smiles against his t shirt. Merlin stares at the scarf, runs his fingers over the little knots, imagines Arthur making them – _knitting_ – for him.

‘I didn’t hate it,’ Arthur murmurs, ‘I could never – I was – surprised. You have to admit, Merlin, it’s strange – very, very strange. Of all the things we could have made – of all the people we could have asked for help – so strange we picked exactly the same thing.’

Strange is one word for it, Merlin thinks. _Insanely fucking wonderful_ would also cover it.

‘So.’

‘So.’

‘What were you saying about this not working?’

‘Nothing. Didn’t say anything.’

‘Sure?’

Merlin looks at him, at the reflection of them together. 

‘Are you?’ he says. ‘Of me?’

‘I was sure I wanted to spend Christmas with you, even though it meant royally pissing off my father. And – your mother shoving Greenpeace flyers into my pockets notwithstanding – I’m very glad I came. Will that do? For now?’

Merlin smiles at him, and Arthur takes it as invitation to mouth a line over Merlin’s t shirt, and then for his tongue to tickle its way up his ear. Merlin feels it in his knees. He lets the scarf fall back into its box, and Arthur touches his jaw to turn him into a kiss. It’s immediately hungry and open and relentless, and the wet desperation of Arthur’s mouth makes him realise that Arthur always kisses like they’ll never get the chance to do it again. Maybe he’s just as scared about all of this, Merlin thinks. Maybe he was looking for a sign too, a sign that the guy who once wrote _tosspot_ on his forehead might one day change his mind or see something more. It feels like he could. _Does_.

Merlin can’t resist a glance at the glass. He watches them turn into shifting bodies and eager hands and messy, flickering tongues, and _seeing_ it, seeing the way they fit together so easy and effortless, somehow makes it real. He can’t stop watching as Arthur’s fingers slide down his stomach to lift his t shirt and touch beneath, the same way they did that night in the union. Just like then he lets his forehead fall onto Arthur’s shoulder as his skin bumps up at the rush of the air and the bit of him that can still think whispers _yes, fuck, perfect_. Arthur mouths his neck, nipping at his skin, and Merlin wants to say something big and important about the cheque and the scarf but he’s too simpering and kitteny. Instead he catches Arthur’s chin, draws him into another kiss. 

After a moment Arthur murmurs, ‘Come back to bed?’ against his lips. Merlin shakes his head, tightens his fingers, meets Arthur’s eye in the reflection and lifts an eyebrow in suggestion. ‘Oh, here? You want to do it _here_? So you can – watch?’ Merlin nods. ‘That’s a bit kinky, Merlin.’

‘Thought you’d like it.’

Arthur grins, and it’s not long until Merlin’s breath fogs the glass, and his reflection’s eyelids flutter closed, his knuckles as white as the snow outside when they twist in Arthur’s hair.

______

Arthur lassoes Merlin with tinsel the instant he’s through the door. Merlin staggers as he’s tugged into a kiss – the noisy, enthusiastic sort – and Arthur tosses the end of the string over his shoulder like a feather boa.

‘Let me guess – you decorated.’

‘It’s December the first.’

Merlin makes a show of looking past him, even though he knows exactly what’s there. His vintage baubles hang from the fireplace, each one immaculately placed, and the robins have multiplied at a rate of two a year and are now almost a flock. Arthur puts them everywhere. Last year he hid a pair in the fridge sharing leftover pizza, and Merlin wonders where this year’s new additions are lurking, whether they’ll be perched on a coat hanger or under his pillow or leering at him from the top of the bathroom mirror. He murmurs approval, and Arthur grins and tugs his tinsel.

Neither of them ever says it, what this really means to them, or how early they both knew this was it. They talk around it, sometimes – _so did you really write poetry about my fingernails? Only short ones. Free-form. Barely counts_ – and respect it with a gift every year, homemade. They try not to make each other the same thing – but haven’t succeeded yet. One year they made each other CDs – all the same tracks but in a slightly different order – the next it was knitting again but blankets this time, like the ones on Merlin’s mum’s bed. This year Merlin has made him a mug. It has a picture of them both at a party printed on it, him drunk and singing, Arthur red-eyed and squinty. He picked it because even if Arthur comes to the same mug conclusion his vanity should preclude him from selecting that particular shot. Merlin knows, though, there’s every chance Boxing Day will ring to laughter and _no, see, I picked that one because it’s the last one you’d think I’d choose. Damn it, Merlin_. 

Merlin doesn’t know what it means, if it means anything at all. But he likes it, that however different they are, however their thoughts diverge and their approaches vary, they always end up in _exactly_ the same place. 

‘What?’ Arthur says.

‘Thinking.’

‘It’s making you smile.’

‘Yeah, it is. You do that.’ He scuffs Arthur’s chin with his thumb. ‘I saw the paper. _Pendragon junior risks father’s wrath with tax breaks to help the poorest_ – ’

‘I think it’s fair to say he won’t be inviting me home for Christmas this year.’

Arthur looks down, and he’s still there – the real Arthur – the one who never says anything about his dead mother and his famous father, or about growing up amongst a dearth of love and a surfeit of expectation he’s chosen to meet and defy at the same time. Merlin takes the tinsel from round his neck, throws it around Arthur’s instead and draws him closer. 

‘If I had a Sharpie right now,’ Merlin says, ‘what do you think I’d write on your forehead?’

‘ _Tosspot_ , probably. I haven’t changed _that_ much, and in the new year I’m going to have to do something that’ll make your mother very angry.’

Merlin shakes his head, pulls him in until they’re nose to nose, and Arthur murmurs surprise.

‘ _Mine_. I’d write _mine_. Proudly.’ 

‘Really?’

‘What’d you write on me?’

‘Same.’

‘That’s _very_ saccharine.’

‘I know. True, though. Or maybe I’m just being nice because I need somewhere to spend Christmas.’

‘Did you make the bed?’

‘Do I ever?’ Merlin tugs on the tinsel and drags him towards the stairs. ‘See, you still can’t resist me, can you, Merlin? And who can blame you, I’m very – ’

Merlin falls against his mouth and kisses him, just to stop him talking. This bit is still the easiest, the press of Arthur’s excessively lovely body and the way it makes him lose his head. But even when things aren’t easy – in fact especially when they’re not – he’s glad that one Christmas, the universe decided to send him a scarf-based message to tell him to see the could in people. There’s a lot of _could_ in Arthur – and a fair amount in him too – and these days, it’s the kind that doesn’t fade.


End file.
